The Real Problem by Ryan Cheshire

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SUMMARY: A short allegorical piece of dark fantasy based on the objective philosophies of Ayn Rand.

It was the fear of believing what couldn't be possible that destroyed him. Everything he knew about the world told him it was impossible for the dark figure looming over him to exist. It did and it was his failure to take action that destroyed him. He could have run. He did not. He could have fought. He did not. He could have outwitted it. He did not. The creature was large, methodical in its movements, a solid darkness with hulking appendages moving without thought but for the small cowering figure in the corner of its own home. But mostly it was dumb. Even so, it hadn't taken the monster long to decide that homes were not protection for the things living in it but instead seemed only to act as a cage, holding inside the creatures that could give it what it wanted. What it wanted more than anything, the only desire it had was the desire to witness fear, and everywhere it went, it found fear in abundance.
The monster hadn't existed for more than a few hours. In that time he had witnessed the destruction of the residents of Holland Avenue and by chance turned left towards Cutler Street. There was nothing about Cutler Street that was different from Holland Avenue other than its length.
The monsters path was undeterred. The two cars that drove past it did not stop. There belief in the impossibility of monsters carried them quietly on their way. Animal Control wasn't called. The Army wasn't called. It wasn't noticed. It didn't exist until it was impossible to not believe that the creature with the toothless pit of a mouth and solid hulking mass was holding you firmly with it's gaze. Teeth were unnecessary instruments of fear.
No thought was put into the destination, only the movements, an unknowable being attempting to maintain a sense of self in a world that would never acknowledge it until confronted by it. It was the darkest part of humanity's existence, the risks one failed to take, the setbacks that crippled men, the dark hearts of lonely women, the infinite tortures of the unknowable. It was all these and more, and being so much, it took concentration to hold any form at all.
The first house of the second street the monster visited that night was a brown stucco, single story home with a well--kept yard and rich green grass. It moved slowly for no other reason than to savor the idea of what it would find inside. It thought of the man, who moments ago, witnessed his own destruction because his fear that he would never make anything of himself had stopped him from even trying. The withered grandmother who feared her death every night going unnoticed by her children and grandchildren was particularly savory, and the thought of encountering another such fear was nice. The nightmares of the little girl with the stuffed pony, of her mother and father abandoning her in a thousand different scenes and a thousand different was, never to return was beyond comprehension. A fear so deep it would remain burned into the monster for an eternity.
It stood waiting at the door in the moonless evening air.